Wooden floors.Laminate floors.decisions

We bought a beige carpet for the hall about eight years ago when we moved into the house, it's a mess.

Time to upgrade.

No more carpets in the hallway, it's going to be dominated by cats, teenagers & toddlers over the next decade or so.

My wife assures me that laminate flooring is just like the real thing these days only better, I am sceptical and like the sound of wood. It's a small narrow hall and a little square upstairs, around 10-15 meters squared all in. Downstairs is concrete 4Mx1M with a sneaky bit under the stairs where the rabbits live, upstairs is about 3 meters squared of floorboards.

Does B&B have any pearls of wisdom for happy flooring that can take a beating?

Get the hardwoods. Will take a beating better and improve the resale value.

I would just get the real thing. I've never been a fan of imitation anything. I love hardwood floors. They are surprisingly soft, though, so if your children drop a glass, a cell phone, etc., those items will probably survive.

Not interested in resale value, beyond a substantial lottery win I'm pretty comfortable where I am. Budget was planned for cheap laminate but a good friend has helped increase it to 'what would be best"?

Between my parents' hardwood and the laminate in my house, I'd choose hardwood any day of the week.
Having said that, my house is about 10 yrs old and I know the laminate technology has significantly increased over the years.

Hardwood does not outgas formaldehyde fumes 24 hours a day like laminates and "engineered" fakes....Lumber liquidators is being sued as we read this post...

I've installed a laminate, with a rubberish backing. Used for a bathroom where moisture is expected.
Laminated flooring with MDF - fiberboard backing do not fare well when subject to moisture.
How well trained are the rabbits? Or the teenagers for that matter.

We recently built, and went with engineered hardwood. Supposedly it is more resistant to scratching than traditional hardwood. But, if it odes scratch, you have fewer opportunities to resurface it.

I'd say if $$ is no concern, get the real thing and treat it well. We made our decision based on both cost and the fact that we have a young soon-to-be toddler and wanted the extra resistance to scratches. Good luck!

Rabbits are easy to train. Teenagers, not so much.

I have about 500 sq ft to replace in my basement (water heater went and destroyed a large portion of the carpet - might as well change it up).

I'm looking at laminate or engineered hardwood. I have no need for the real thing down there (cost matter). I will "probably" go with laminate myself just due to the location and lack of constant use.

It's all about your needs and your budget.

Do hardwood but do a floating floor aka a click/clack floor. The joints connect together in a way that delivers a tight finish and if you ever need it removed or replaced (can't imagine why you'd need it replaced) it can't be taken out easily.

I agree. Nothing like the real thing.

MrSpeedy said:

Get the hardwoods. Will take a beating better and improve the resale value.

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Cheers all, gonna go stare at bits of wood and fake wood tomorrow.

Real hardwood is the current plan but I'm keeping an open mind as there's a lot of dependencies to satisfy matching old wooden window frames to new wooden floors & doors, thankfully after the beige carpets wars of 2008 it seems that me and SWMBA have much more in common when it comes to decorating these days.

The rabbits are pretty well behaved, toilet trained and are in a pen with a corex floor most of the time, one was kept as house rabbit for a few years until she developed a taste for cables, the other isn't much of an adventurer or destroyer. Toddler & pre-teen are both able to escape corex floored pens and seem to be more labour intensive in the toilet training and behaviour side of things.

Take a real hard look at the latest laminates. We went with laminate as opposed to hardwood and have no regrets; not having to worry about the dogs damaging it is a bonus. As always, YMMV...

My house is over a hundred years old. I can't date the hardwood in it but I would guess that most of it is at least fifty years old and still looking good. It shows "character" after all those years, to be sure. Give me shabby chic over plain shabby any day.

Laminates, no matter how good, are a veneer over a base that is not meant for presentation. Once the veneer is worn out, you will throw away the base of mashed wood too. Could be a big load to send to the landfill.

Laminate is considered replaceable flooring (like carpet). That said, it's come a long way in the last decade, and will likely stand up to more punishment than traditional hardwoods due to its higher Janka rating. If I was placing flooring in a very high traffic area or a rental - I'd go laminate and replace later.

If I was going to re-floor a home I planned to be in for a long time, I'd go with the best hardwood I could afford. Since you are going to have a high level of traffic from the teenagers - you might consider a harder wood, and possibly a distressed version that will hide the nicks & scratches that will inevitably show up.

You'll likely need to do a floating floor above the concrete and use some vapor barrier. If you use cork underlayment, it will provide a decent insulation in the cooler months and a softer step year-round.

Good luck!

T.Orso said:

My house is over a hundred years old.

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Mine turned 100 years in 2014. Hardwoods all around which I truly adore accented by oriental throw rugs. When I purchased the home I had to remove wall to wall carpet which covered all the wonderful oak. It was a common mainstream belief at one time that hardwoods were considered a sign one could not afford carpet. The tables have turned. New hardwoods are not cheap.

A couple years ago I moved into a 70 year old house that was carpeted throughout. I promptly removed the carpeting and found beautiful 1-1/2" wide strip oak flooring in the original part of the house, and plywood and particle board in the 1980's addition.

I thought long and hard about what to do on top of that very substantial sub-floor. I had previously installed pegged oak flooring in a house I built... so I was familiar with installing real wood flooring. On the other hand I had watched a YouTube video submitted by an experienced laminate floor installer who stated that the only laminate floor he would install in his own house was "Quick-Step". I finally decided to install Quick Step Home Laminate. I took my time, followed all directions, and wound up with a very fine-looking floor.






Is it as nice looking as the original part of the house? Probably not, but since it has it's own sort of visual appeal and is giving extremely good service, I don't spend much time comparing the two. I did however spend a lot of time choosing just the right color and pattern, so walking over the transition between the old oak floor and the new laminate floor is not at all jarring to one's senses.

We've had "engineered hardwood" floors throughout the house for 3 years now and they've done quite well even with 6 dogs running amok with nails we don't clip nearly often enough. When we pulled the carpet out, the original wood floors were unsalvageable due to several large plywood squares where the original coal furnace heating system was replaced with a gas furnace and all new duct work/returns.

One thing I got done this year was having a whole-house humidifier installed. If we don't use a humidifier in the Winter, some of the joints will start to come apart a little. As long as you keep the gaps vacuumed out it all tightens back up in the Spring but the gaps still annoy me.

We had a portable humidifier that helped a lot with that, but I was having to buy filters for it and dump 3 gallons of water a day into it.
We're also both gone from the house 12 hours a day 4 days a week and I was too paranoid to leave the humidifier plugged in and running while we were gone so the house was only receiving moisture part of the time. It wasn't really big enough to effectively humidify the whole house either as there are some doors we leave closed in the Winter or when the dogs are upstairs.

We haven't tested out this new system yet as it hasn't been cold enough to run the furnace, but it only requires a $15 water pad once a year and basically "injects" moisture throughout the entire house whenever the furnace runs. I'm hoping it works out for us.

So, depending on where you live and what product you choose, you might want to consider keeping your humidity up in the Winter.

I just moved out of a house with laminate floors and into a 65 year old house with the original wood floors. Between both houses, the hard wood flooring wins hands down. It looks better and is so much easier to keep clean. I could sweep the laminates 20 times a day and there would still be dust and dirt. I can hit the wood floors with a quick once over on the broom and mop and they look great.